


articles about vigilantes

by Ejunkiet, evil bunny wolf (evil_bunny_king)



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: An exchanging of letters, Bulletin Crime Beat - online blog and tipline, Crime-Fighting Duo, Dysfunctional Communication, F/M, In the form of anonymous tips, Post-daredevil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-02-23 20:23:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13197861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejunkiet/pseuds/Ejunkiet, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil%20bunny%20wolf
Summary: 12:35am - unknown number:[it’s Karen. are you there Frank?]





	1. Articles about vigilantes

**Author's Note:**

> A story told through scraps and deleted text messages (in the face of the inevitable).
> 
> Karen Page, (thebulletincrimebeat/ejunkiet) and Frank Castle (holdcntight/devilbunnyking).

It’s coming on three am: the pot of coffee she’d started an hour ago has long since gone cold, and it’s way too late for her to still be working on this article. The white space on the page blinks back at her, devoid of inspiration no matter how many times she goes over her notes or pours over the crime scene reports, and with the full stretch of the work week before her, Karen Page is just about ready to call it for the night.  
  
It’s with begrudging defeat that she closes the document, prepares to switch off her laptop and place it beneath the coffee table when the web browser she’d left open earlier catches her eye. An article from the Bulletin’s sister paper has appeared on her RSS feed: a tabloid whose threshold for credibility is far below that of the main paper. Normally she’d have ignored it - their stories were sensationalist more times than not - but the headline catches her eye, written in glaring full-caps: 

> _THE PUNISHER STRIKES AGAIN? A MESSAGE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE._

The article itself refers to some sort of copycat, but Karen knows the truth about that night on the docks, knows the truth behind the rumors of the Punisher myth, and she skims over the details, piecing together the story from the bulk.  
  
Half a dozen gang members killed in a warehouse just outside the city limits, two days ago. The bodies were found within a destroyed meth lab, with signs that they had been subjected to a brutal beating before the place had been burned down around them. Smoke residue within their lungs suggest that they’d still been alive when the place had gone up in flames.  
  
Frank Castle had returned to the city.  
  
She presses the power button, sliding the screen to her laptop shut before leaning back into the sofa, tucking her knees up against her chest.  
  
–  
  
Sometimes, when she gets the chance to sit down and think, really think, about Frank and his crusade, the weight of his actions settle like lead within her stomach.  
  
Justice. Retribution. Vengeance. These are all just words - excuses, maybe; bland and meaningless when faced with the reality of what he really is.  
  
Frank Castle is a man that operates above and beyond the law. He’s got his own sense of ethics and morality that determines how he acts. He’s ruthless, unforgiving, undeterred. Judge, jury and executioner.  
  
And she has to ask, has to put the question into words: what gave him the right? The punishment fits the crime, she can hear him say; but who’s to say that he’s any better than the people he kills, or that these deaths mean anything in the greater scheme of things? The street-level dealer, the cartel runner - these men, these crimes, are just symptoms of a greater sickness, one that dwells within this city and every city, a type of corruption that can’t ever truly be erased.  
  
And at what point does the ethics of one man break down until he cracks, takes a shot he shouldn’t have, takes the life of an innocent? Years into his crusade, with so much death and so little progress, what will happen then? Will he turn the gun on himself?  
  
Frank Castle is a man of self-loathing and contradiction. That, at least, she’d managed to glean from him during their brief time together. She knows, though, that he still remembers what it is to be human. During their discussions, he’d speak of it, recall memories of his family, the ties to his humanity tenable and fragile as he reached for the connection, the memory of Frank the father, the husband. His voice almost reverent, he’d recall how he’d loved them and they loved him back, and how he’d lived once, before all of this.  
  
But then his voice would grow hollow, his face hard. He’d swallow and his throat would close before he’d glance away, expression shutting down once more.  
  
Conversation would always be harder after that, and over time she’d learn to watch for those moments, when she became aware that she was no longer talking to Frank, but instead the man he was becoming.


	2. 6am, Bulletin Crime Beat update

> _“Reports are coming in of a house fire in a family home in Glen Oaks, Queens. The fire started at approximately 1am and was subdued by firefighters by 3am. There are no reported injuries, as the neighbors report that the house had apparently been unoccupied for quite some time. More on this story as it comes in.”_
> 
> \- The Bulletin Crime Beat updated, typed in a rush and barely checked for typos


	3. 6.15am, Bulletin Crime Beat update

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frank.

It takes two more days for the news to fully break.

> _VENGEANCE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE? PUNISHER’S HOUSE BURNS DOWN: FIND OUT MORE PAGE 3-_

The usual bullshit follows. The tabloids wring it dry, cough up every ‘victim’s’ relative they can scrounge (“I’d piss on the bastard if they’d only found the body”); the broadsheets cough up a footnote. He keeps his head down, scratches by on beans and the latest intel and within a month the city has already forgotten him. He becomes a boogie man. That suits him just fine.

He doesn’t check the blog.

-

[as he walks past the mailbox, he doesn’t look back. He doesn’t look back but he feels it when the boiler explodes - the heat and the force of it and for a moment he’s somewhere else, somewhere there’s oil and there’s fire and the air whistles in the flames]

[his ears are bleeding when he gets back into the car]

[he can’t get the smell of smoke out of his nose]


	4. 12:35am, text message (no reply)

It’s with a rare stroke of luck that she finds Frank Castle’s number, although she has little reason to believe that he’s still using it. It’s been days since he’d made the call, and the phone was probably a burner, cheap and disposable; he’d have little reason to keep it after it’d served its intended purpose.

However, this was all she had. A number that he’d used to contact social services after he’d broken up a prostitution ring, passed onto her by one of her contacts within the child welfare department. She shouldn’t want anything to do with him, not after their last exchange in the woods, a memory that lingered on those painfully long nights where sleep was hard to find and she wondered, was there anything I could have done better? Anything that I could have said to reach him?

It’s those questions and her regret from that night that’s lead her to where she is now. Thumbs hovering over the keyboard, deliberating, assessing the collective weight of their history, everything that’s passed between them, with what could be gained from rekindling this connection - before she finally presses send on the message.

 _12:35am - unknown number._ [it’s Karen. are you there Frank?]


	5. 12:37am, text message (ignored)

He’s cleaning the glock he should’ve gotten around to before crashing after the last operation when the text arrives. He’s exhausted, still, his cheekbone swollen and shiny from the boot he met with his face and it’s that cocktail of wooziness and meds, he thinks, that stops him from deleting the message right away.

A quick message to micro and yeah, it’s her number.

He sets aside the phone and returns to the gun.

He has a few options, here. Ditch the sim, forget the number - it wouldn’t deter her but hell, his “death” hadn’t, and this wouldn’t start anything, either. Keep the message constant: stop digging, there’s nothing to left to dig for. It’s a lie neither of them can keep straight, but it might as well be true – he’s not sure even Maria’d recognise him, now, for all that she’d seen him at the worst of it. The second tour, the _itch_ before he enlisted for the third- he’d been afraid she’d leave him- he wouldn’t even have blamed her, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t.

She’s not here though. She never would be again.

He says it to himself, the familiar mantra.

And it’s familiar, the burn that follows. The dim, cold fury.

Frank Castle was dead. He was dead like his family, and he was dead to Karen Page and so he picks up the phone and stares at the screen a minute and he deletes the message.

No point ditching the sim. Micro’d have it changed within the week, anyway.

He sets his phone back down and gets back to work.

-

[Maria’d had this favourite song. She used to play it all the time -when she found out she was having Lisa, when they were stuck in traffic, when Junior threw a fit over breakfast and she cleaned mushy peas off the wall. It was a stupid, catchy thing – some pop hit from the 80s, from back when they’d first started dating. She and Lisa would sing it at the top of their lungs whenever it came on and, sometimes, he’d join in too. Bullshit the chorus, make ‘em laugh]

[he can no longer remember what it was]


	6. 3:27am, text message

Time passes.

She keeps digging.

\--

He stares at his phone. He stares at it for a long time. Too much time. There is blood cooling in his clothes; his broken nose throbs - from a lucky elbow, fist, he’s not sure and fuck if it matters - and he smears blood across the screen as he swipes into it, as he taps his way to her blog, navigating to the tip line.

When he reaches the message box, though, he still hesitates. He can see her face through the red.

 

> _[3:27 AM] Cock Inn on 49th. 8pm tomorrow. Perkins. Minor player, looking to flip._


	7. 3:27am, text message

Her phone vibrates against the nightstand, a loud rumble in the quiet of her apartment. A glance at the screen tells her it’s _three o’clock in the morning,_ and that the notification is from the tip line - an alert that an anonymous submission has been received.

Fingers fumbling with the code to unlock the screen, Karen reads the submission through blurry vision, and then reads it again to make sure she’s reading it right.

The senders information has been censored into an indecipherable jumble of letters and numbers, but the message itself is clear:

> [3:27 AM] Cock Inn on 49th. 8pm tomorrow. Perkins. Minor player, looking to flip.

Perkins. _Perkins._ The name rings a bell - she’d come across him before, a runner for the Cartels? She glances over the posts for the Bulletin Crime Beat - she’s made no mention of her current investigation into the restructure of the gangs in Hell’s Kitchen, and it’s not like anyone at the Bulletin knew either - Ellison would shut her down immediately if he even suspected she was wandering into dangerous territory again. (”We’ve already lost one good reporter, Page. We don’t need to lose another.”)

Maybe one of her contacts in the local police force? She must have mentioned it to Brett, or he’d figured it out, put out some feelers until he came across this information.

Regardless, this was - good. Really good. She sets an alarm on her phone for 7:30am, makes plans to get an early start, scope out the area. If Perkins could give her what she needed, then she’d approach Ellison with the article, win him over with the facts. Ellison was a good boss, he’d see reason.

She’ll remember to drop by the precinct and thank Brett in person later, too.


	8. 7:45pm, incoming message (ignored)

> **Message Subject:** Approaching deadline for the weekend edition.
> 
> When can I expect the copy from you? The deadline for the mock up is tonight; we need something for your column.
> 
> -M. Ellison

Karen’s half a block away from the location of the meet when her phone vibrates in her pocket, accompanied by a cheerful ‘ping’ that signified the message she’d received was an email. At this time of night, it’s most likely work - Ellison, - checking up on the progress of her latest story.

It’s poor timing - she can just about make out the glowing neon sign outside the bar, half-hidden behind the happy hour crowds of Friday night. It’s a warm summer evening at the tail end of the heat wave that’s hit the east coast, and the streets are more packed than usual, the people of New York taking advantage of the better weather. She’s dressed appropriately, having taken the time to dig out an old summer dress from the back of her closet, something simple and light that’s coupled with a clutch just large enough to hold the essentials. She’s ready, she thinks, for what happens next.

Her phone vibrates again, a loud buzz in her pocket, reminding her of the impending notification. Ellison’s waiting on a fluff piece, a short column about a new online game that’s taken the city’s youth by storm, called Poke-xercize, or something; she’d have to check her notes. She’d drafted the article, even conducted some interviews with a few of the kids in her neighborhood; it just needed one more read-over before it was done. She’d planned on submitting it before she left, but in the end it had slipped her mind.

She takes her phone out, unlocks the screen, considers the options before her. If she missed the deadline, Ellison would be unhappy, but he’d manage. If she missed this meet up, she could lose this lead – lose traction on the entire case.

Flicking through the settings, she turns off the audio alert for notifications, and puts her phone on silent.

Just this once, Ellison can wait.


	9. 8pm, stakeout

He shows. He shouldn’t, the tip was supposed to be the end of it but he’d known it wouldn’t cut it and it hadn’t, so here he was: crouched on a fire-escape opposite the ‘Cock Inn’ in the middle of summer and sweating bullets.

It was part of the clean-up, he could tell himself. A lot of the people Andy Perkins had known were now dead and it took less to make a man a little paranoid, to get their trigger finger itching. Perkins was alive because he hadn’t been important enough to be really involved in the business and because his conscience had bit him in the ass, but all that, it mean shit when someone really got a sense of what was coming for you. When Perkins made his peace with that, Frank would be there to see he made the right choice. Simple as.

Except it wasn’t, because he was also here for Page. To make sure the meet didn’t fuck up, that she didn’t find a knife at her throat (or at least make sure Perkins found a bullet first).

Except it wasn’t because the street around the pub was quickly turning into bedlam and his idea of staking out the place long-range had been thoroughly and efficiently fucked.

The heat had broken over the east coast for the first time in a month and the city had churned onto the streets, taking Page and Perkins with it.

It’s still maddening, the press of humidity. He feels the thickness of the air when he breathes, filling his lungs like wet cotton and he’d never thought he’d miss Iraq but at least the heat there had been _dry_.

He sits there and he scopes out the crowd and he glimpses Page once or twice, on her way to the pub entrance – elbowing her way surprisingly effectively through the throng before disappearing inside.

Ten minutes pass (he wipes the sweat from his eyes, for what good it does) but she might as well have disappeared into thin air.

No signs of Perkins. He _knows_ the bastard’s here though.

Nothing for it.

He rocks back on his heels, binoculars in hand, and considers the sanity of what he's planning for all of a minute before he descends into the pub.


	10. New York Bulletin announcement: missing person alert

> _The New York Bulletin is interested in any information regarding the location and welfare of junior Criminal Justice Correspondent Karen Page. Ms. Page was last seen at at Cock’s Inn bar in downtown Hell’s Kitchen on Friday July 22nd._
> 
> _Please contact the Bulletin main offices using our phone line, online messaging system, or the anonymous tip line submission form hosted by this blog._
> 
> _We’re working around the clock to ensure the safe location of Ms. Page. These first forty-eight hours are crucial._
> 
> _\- Mitchell Ellison, Senior Editor_


	11. 5am, somewhere on the docks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last thing Karen Page remembers is the street outside the bar.

The last thing Karen Page remembers is the street outside the bar, the air thick with the mid-summer heat and the cloying humidity that swamps the East Coast every year. The back of her neck is prickled with sweat as she makes her way down the crowded street, carving a path through the press of bodies until she’s reached the entrance to the bar. Her heart beats a frenetic rhythm within her chest, although whether it’s due to excitement or nerves, it’s impossible to tell; it’s like she’s been possessed by a frantic energy, her skin almost buzzing with it. This is it, she thinks; the culmination of months of work. This is it.  
  
Then nothing.  
  
Her head aches. Thoughts come thick and slow, as if moving through treacle. Her arms are twisted behind her back, the cold bite of metal telling her she’s been cuffed, the angle awkward, the strain building within her shoulders, sharp and painful. She’s seated at least, her legs bound with a softer material, more forgiving, so there’s a chance she could walk out of here, if the opportunity came, and she’ll take comfort in that.  
  
She focuses on those details, the little victories, and breathes.  
  
Little by little, the fog that clouds her thoughts retreats, until she can finally  _think,_  string a sentence or two together without losing the thread. The ache within her temples is still there, throbbing, the pounding pulse of a migraine, but it isn’t as bad as it was when she first woke, and it doesn’t hinder her now as she pulls her thoughts into order and realises just how  _screwed_  she is.

Shit.  _Shit._

Keeping her eyes closed, her breaths soft and even despite the beginning thrum of panic within her chest, she focuses on the space around her, listening. It’s quiet, one of those deep, echoing silences that tells her the room she’s in is large and empty, likely a warehouse or something of that same ilk. She can hear cars on the road outside, but they’re infrequent, brief, the gentle hum of a highway. She’s outside of the city, she realises, and her heat rate kicks up another notch, but she swallows it down.

(There’ll be enough time for panic later _; there always is)_

She keeps breathing and  _listens_. Two more cars pass by, the steady hum of their engines brief interruptions in the silence, but nothing changes, and she thinks – she thinks she’s alone. She waits though, holds off for another two cars before she chances opening her eyes, squinting into the darkness.

When her eyes have adjusted to the dim light that filters in from the street, she sees she was right: the place is deserted. What’s more, it’s a large, industrial warehouse, although it doesn’t look as if it’s been used in several years, the walls grimy and the floors littered with trash. She can make out the silhouettes of abandoned machinery in the corners, strange contortions of metal and machine that she can’t even begin to discern the function of. She glances away, looking down at where she’s been practically hogtied to this chair – and that’s when she sees it.

There’s blood on her dress, thick, dark streaks of black that arc across the front of her skirt and splatter across her calves. It glimmers wetly in the dim light from the street and now that she sees it, she can  _smell it_ , and the nausea rolls in her stomach until she has to turn her face and gag onto the warehouse floor.

She shuts her eyes again, blocking the sight of it, as if that could remove the stain from her person and focuses instead on that night, trying to piece together the fractured pieces of her memory. Small snatches come back to her – ordering a drink at the bar, meeting her mark, a recent immigrant from Ireland, barely twenty-three and way too young to be in this line of work.

_Perkins._

There’s a queasy feeling in her stomach that has nothing to do with the pounding across her temples when she thinks of the name; but as much as she pulls at the memory, she can’t get a clear picture of what happened. She has no way of knowing if he’s alive or dead.

That, more than anything else that has happened here, makes her afraid.

_(Shit.)_


End file.
